


nor are we forgiven

by thekookster



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, NHL Trade(s), Polyamory, Trade Talks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:33:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27608360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekookster/pseuds/thekookster
Summary: Zhenya got the call on a Thursday.
Relationships: Anna Kasterova/Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 76





	nor are we forgiven

**Author's Note:**

> I read about Sid shutting down the (apparently quite serious) trade talks that the pens had with the panthers about Geno in the summer of 2019 and this fic happened. Unbeta’d, as always.  
> Title is from Snow and Dirty Rain by Richard Siken, because I’m a caricature of myself. I almost changed it, but the alternate title would’ve been “big russian feelings”, so I digress.

Zhenya got the call on a Thursday.

After he put the phone down, after he told Anna, she only looked at him cautiously, a thousand thoughts already thought and plans made for every eventuality shining behind her clever eyes. She had moved to America for him, for his career already, and he knew she would do this for him too. He did not have to ask. 

Instead, she did.

“Well? Is it what you want?” She asked, finding the one question he did not have the answer to, the chink in his armour. He found he could not answer it.

“You might like it in Miami,” he said instead, not looking at her.

“Yes,” she confirmed, “we have an apartment there and friends already and I would not have to build a new life.” _Unlike the move to Pittsburgh_ , it went unsaid. “But Tiger, that is not what I asked.”

Zhenya knew it was a nudge to consider and share his considerations, but he could not quite make sense of his thoughts. They swam in and out of focus, too blurred by grief and rage to arrive at a concrete conclusion. Yet he was so numb that he, for once, did not know how to even curse out his feelings, expel them in a flurry of expletives.

He had not expected it. That was what had made it so upsetting.

“Oh, Zhenya,” Anna murmured, a sweet sound, moreso for the fact that she rarely called him by his name, and it was only when she cupped his face to turn him to look at her that he realised he was crying. It was not his feelings that made the world blurry after all, just his tears. He gave in to the sobs bubbling out of his chest and wrapped his arms around her, wanting to bury his face in her neck and just stay there forever. She cradled his head there, his Anya, and held him as he sobbed. “Zhenyechka,” she whispered, clearly distraught by his grief. 

“They don’t want me anymore,” he gasped between jagged inhales.

 _Sid doesn’t want me any more_ , he did not say.

It felt like Anna understood anyway.

After he tired himself out, after Anna led him gently to bed, he woke up the next morning already working himself up into a rage. These idiots in management that wanted to get rid of one of their three top scorers. Fine, he would let them, he would have a wonderful life in Miami and watch the Penguins burn from afar while sunning himself at the pool. They could not replace him adequately. It was impossible, and Rutherford had already started burning down the roster idiotically. Let them burn it all, then, what did Zhenya have to care.

He called them back after breakfast, okaying initial talks, saying that he would take Florida into consideration. He was half mad as he said it, clipped and blunt, and when the rage burnt down and the regret set in, he had already hung up. 

Well. Too late to take it back now, he decided, searing an ache into his chest at the thought, and then he decided not to think about it any more.

Of course, it all went to hell two days later.

He did not expect the doorbell to ring, was not expecting visitors, and Anya had gone out and taken Niki with her. He thought that maybe she had forgotten her keys and opened the door without looking to find Sid standing on his doorstep.

Sid, who was supposed to have left to Canada for the summer three hours earlier.

Zhenya paused, caught off guard, although he knew it should not have surprised him. He turned on his heel to go back into the kitchen, leaving the door open as an implicit invitation. 

Sid took it, years of partnership and familiarity behind the silent exchange. Zhenya swiftly turned away from the thought, as if to shield himself.

“Is it true? Did you take it?” Sid demanded. Of course he was too impatient to wait until they were settled in the kitchen to start asking his questions. Typical. Zhenya went to the counter to stir his tea in avoidance.

“Don’t know what you mean, Sid,” he lied. 

“Don’t do that, Geno, you know I mean Florida,” Sid said, and Zhenya looked over and was surprised to note that he was angry, truly angry, like Sid never got off the ice. Annoyed, frustrated, impatient— these were all vices within Sid’s repertoire. But angry? Zhenya could not recall such an occasion.

“What about Florida?” Zhenya replied neutrally, still hoping to avoid the issue.

“The trade talks with Florida Rutherford called me this morning about!” Sid finally exploded, gesturing uncharacteristically wildly. He seemed to vibrate with rage— Zhenya had never seen him like this before. It made him feel lost in the face of such an unprecedented reaction.

Zhenya shrugged, as if trying to close himself off and shy away from Sid’s prickly rage. “They call. Interested, I guess,” he offered.

“And?” Sid demanded immediately.

Zhenya shrugged again, staring into his mug. “Rutherford call me, ask if I’m okay with talk. He want to change team, always change. So I say yes, okay, talk. See what Florida say.” 

Sid paused. He was chewing on something in that brain of his. 

“Did you ask for this? Did you ask for a trade?” He asked finally, controlled now, steel under wool. Zhenya finally looked at him.

He had not noticed, in his avoidance, how disheveled Sid looked. His hair was not even styled, the handsome curl of his fringe drooping over his forehead. 

Zhenya ached for him, now more than ever. He could not lie to him, even if Sid did not want him any more. For a moment, just for Sid, he set his pride aside.

“No,” he admitted finally. “Don’t want trade, Rutherford ask me.” 

Something hardened in Sid’s gaze at that, and he turned towards the front door.

“I’ll be back tomorrow, I’m going to take care of this,” he said, voice low and dangerous in a way that made Zhenya’s hair stand on end. “And then we’re going to talk about this.”

He closed the door after himself, ever the polite gentleman. The bang of it was louder than usual.

Although he told Anna about it when she came home, she was not surprised. Sid had probably briefed her, or maybe even persuaded her to leave the house so he could ambush Zhenya. Of course, she would never admit to it. It was something that rarely frustrated and often delighted him, and never elicited any other reaction. He loved his wife and her loving scheming, how deeply it spoke of her knowledge of him, even if it made him petulant at times to be handled. 

“I’ll take Niki out tomorrow again,” she said innocently, “he’ll enjoy another day trip.”

Zhenya knew it was to give Sid and him some privacy, even if they were pretending otherwise. Part of him wanted to use her as a shield, to continue avoiding Sid and his intense gaze, but she would not have the patience for it in this instance, and he would feel bad about it too, after the fact.

Around midday the next day, Rutherford called to tell him that Florida wasn’t interesting to them after all, and that they’d be interested in having internal staff meetings with him instead. For better communications between the leading figures on the team, apparently. Including, of course, meetings between him and Sullivan. 

He had barely hung up when the doorbell rang. Zhenya knew who it was this time, and he let Sid in without any preamble. 

“How you get him to quit?” Zhenya bulldozed while traipsing back into the kitchen. Sid wasn’t the only one who could be blunt. “You talk to Sullivan, make nice, get him to agree?”

Sid’s steps behind him audibly paused. “No.”

Zhenya turned, leaning against the counter, arms crossing and raising his chin. He could not stop his hostility; frustration always boiled over too easily within him. Sid was inscrutable today. 

“I gave him this,” Sid said, holding out a folded piece of paper. Zhenya eyed it dubiously, but took it. When he unfolded it, the page was filled with printed paragraphs of English, and at the bottom, there were two lines, one filled out with Sid’s signature.

“It’s a waiver. For my no-movement clause. I told Rutherford that if he traded you, I was going to ask for the first trade out of Pittsburgh. He refused to sign it.”

Zhenya’s throat dried up in shock. He wanted to call it a bluff, but Sid’s signature stared him down; irrefutable, inked evidence of Sid’s threat to Rutherford. He wished that Sid had told him that he’d threatened Rutherford verbally with leaving, so Zhenya could dismiss it as a lie, but instead, Sid of course had to hand him something impossible to brush off. Unbidden, Zhenya felt his throat close up with emotion.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Sid said fiercely, “you’re mine, and you’re not leaving.” 

“Don’t say like you mean,” Zhenya rasped, surprising himself with the anger in his voice.

Sid frowned. “Of course I mean it, G, you’re staying, Rutherford agreed—,”

“Not this,” Zhenya replied angrily, frustrated with the English language, as per usual. “Блят, Sid. Why you get him to change mind? He ask you before, no?”

“Of course not! They never asked me, G. I got the call yesterday, Jim wanted my approval, and I said no.”

“Why not? Why you make me stay when you don’t want me any more—” Zhenya raged, voice shaky even to his own ears.

“Of course I still want you! Is that what this is about?”

Zhenya stayed stubbornly silent, clenching his jaw.

“I’ve been neglecting you,” Sid realised, frowning. Zhenya wanted to deny it, the implication of it: that he needed Sid’s attention so much, but he could not. His will to deny it could never outweigh the immense aversion to lie to Sid. Against his will, the words left him haltingly.

“I think they ask you first, and you say yes, is okay, you don’t care—”

“It’s not okay! Of course I care, how could you—“ Sid choked out, “god, Geno, how could I let you think that, you know— you know you’re,” Sid swallowed, then looked Zhenya deep in the eyes, helplessly, “you’re everything, G,” he said, and then he reached up and kissed Zhenya.

God, it had been so long since their last kiss. Zhenya remembered it, almost two months past; a tired, sleepy thing, a game into the series against the Islanders. Now he savored the desperate press of Sid against him; the soft, wet chasm of his mouth.

“I love you, G, of course I do. I don’t want you to go, don’t leave me—,” Sid kept saying it between kisses: “I love you, don’t leave me,” almost like a prayer.

He murmured it against Zhenya’s skin, over and over, against his lips. He said it at the foot of the stairs as Zhenya led him up to the bedroom. He said it as he pushed Zhenya down on his bed and climbed over him. He murmured it against Zhenyas stomach as he pulled down Zhenya’s underwear, and before he took him in his mouth. And when he finally slid into Zhenya, pressing their interlaced hands tight against the sheets and begged Zhenya, again; said, “don’t leave me,” Zhenya finally replied. 

“Not leave you,” Zhenya whispered, “Sid, любимый, I’m stay, love you—”

And Zhenya kept murmuring it back, encouraging Sid on with his heels pressed against Sid’s ass. When Sid came, sobbing, tears in his eyes, Zhenya felt the relief hit him like a second orgasm. He held Sid tightly against him through the aftershocks, and kept clinging after Sid finally pulled out, uncaring of the mess and sweat they should have been showering off.

When their breaths finally evened out, Sid’s torso still half flung over his own, Zhenya finally asked Sid to stay. “Anna is away for a little bit more, I think,” he added, hand splayed over Sid’s lower back.

“Yeah,” Sid replied, still come-dumb and lax. “She said she’d leave us be for the afternoon, I think they’re only going to be back in time for dinner.”

So Anna _had_ conspired with Sid. Zhenya took a moment to mentally thank the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for his wife, and resolved to thank Anna herself later for good measure. He was an unspeakably lucky man. 

He looked down at Sid in his arms, clinging back as much as Zhenya was, loving him back after all. Truly, Zhenya was an unspeakably lucky man. Looking at Sid, Zhenya knew he was exhausted after such an uncharacteristically vulnerable display. Zhenya himself was still emotional about the ordeal: it had been an intense and fraught couple of days for the both of them. Zhenya was glad for it to be over.

“Hey,” Sid rasped, leaning up for a tired kiss, “I love you.” He said it as easily as though he was passing a puck for Zhenya to score.

“Love you too,” Zhenya replied. Netting it in was as easy as breathing.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me about hockey on [tumblr](http://crosbyism.tumblr.com)!


End file.
